best way to switch video cards and drivers

English Hardware
#1

Howdy all, hope everyones great.

I would like to know the best way to swap out video cards from ati to nvidia.

For example. In windows, I would uninstall the driver, switch the cards, boot into a low VGA windows session and install the new drivers, reboot done.

In sues, I’m wondering if I uninstall the drivers, after rebooting I might loose my Gnome desktop. And I guess at that point I’d be looking at a blinking cursor?

#2

Hi there,

the best way is just to switch cards and boot again.
Hopefully it just works. Cause the different drivers of the kernel doesnt conflict each other, and drivers are only loaded when the are used.
So when using the ati the nouveau driver just stops working and the ati should start working directly.

Greetz

Joerg

#3

If you have installed the ATI proprietary driver, I think you need to uninstall first. I don’t use ATI, so I am unsure what needs to be done since we don’t know what you have loaded. In general, if you are simply using the default Video driver, you do not need to uninstall anything. If you have installed or will install openSUSE 11.3, you should look at the following thread.

Nvidia and nomodeset kernel parameter

Thank You,

#4

Thanks for those answers, it helps a lot.